‘Law is an instrument of social change’

Prof. Ernest Ojukwu is the immediate past Deputy Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Enugu Campus. He is the pioneer chairman, Governing Council of the Eastern Bar Forum (EBF) and Projects director of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) programme. In this interview with Legal Editor John Austin Unachukwu,he speaks on the standard of legal education, the forthcoming annual general conference of the NBA, globalisation of legal services and sundry issues. Excerpts:

It is generally believed that the quality and standard of legal education have dropped, what is your reaction to this?

I do not like to get into the argument on whether the standard of legal education is falling or has fallen.

If you do some mapping on standards, you will find that the country has indeed provided rules since 1990 to raise the standard of legal education than what we had before that period. Unfortunately, the 1990 reform introduced by the National Universities Commission (NUC) minimum standards have not been built upon or even reviewed to meet the minimum best practices in legal education accepted globally

So we have continued to toddle behind developed nations on legal education and this below average legal education has been with us since Independence.

Why are they just manifesting now?

What has made it look very bad now or made the weaknesses manifest very obviously, are many other challenges created by ourselves or omitted to be addressed.

What are these?

They include the following:

•Astronomical increase in the number of law students. Lecture halls are over crowded.

•Very poor staff-students ratio that does not permit any meaningful student centred learning.

•Poor staff conditions of service

•Too many poor quality law teachers that have no reason to be hired as teachers in the first place;

•Growing corruption and unethical conduct of some law teachers and some law faculties. This includes the growing tendency of many law teachers to abandon their lectures for most parts of the semester.

•Archaic and ineffective traditional law curriculum, with no skills and value contents.

•Unstable academic calendar caused by too many labour strikes and other interruptions.

•Very poor infrastructure and facilities. Most law faculty buildings (even ones built in the last two years) are shameful expression of university academic buildings.

•Poor funding, etc

. One of the saddest things for legal education is that the stakeholder, the NBA which has the biggest interest on the matter has since many years shown almost total disinterest and only pays lip service, at many times sheds crocodile tears on the state of legal education.

Some people have called for Law to be made a second degree course to improve the standard of legal education, what is your reaction to this?

I do not see how making law a second degree can help to improve standards in the profession. I have just listed for you, the reasons why we are unable to come close to addressing best practices in legal education. If you change the learners and you still have these challenges, how will the standard improve. And you remember that what we are talking about legal education extends to other disciplines. So, if we change our law students and now admit those who have also gone through our very poor education system in other disciplines, what miracle do you think will happen? Law is a five years programme and another one year Law School programme. If we mean business, I do not see why we should not be able to train lawyers ready to stand and work very well on graduation.

One of the 10 cardinal points agenda of the Wali-led administration of the NBA is to improve and raise the bar on continuing legal education of Nigerian lawyers, consequently, he has organised several seminars, conferences and workshops in which credit points are awarded to participants, when shall we begin to reap the benefits of those credit points so awarded.

When we get a walking database of the NBA, we would be able to publish the credits earned by Nigerian lawyers. I have been briefed that the NBA contractor would complete the data base project before the end of this year . Let us hope it becomes a reality, then some of these programmes and points will become fully operational.

How does the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) programme of the NBA work?

That would be a long lecture. How it works is contained in the MCLE Rules approved by the NBA National Executive Committee (NEC) about five years ago. It is on the NBA website, but before the end of the year, we shall publish an annotation explaining the rules better.

As one of the founding fathers of the Eastern Bar Forum (EBF) what is your appraisal of the Forum now, do you think it has achieved the aims and objectives of its founding fathers?

Surely it has grown very well. The Forum has also set an example on how democracy works. The third administration is in place now since we founded the Forum in 2004. And I hope that it will keep growing from strength to strength.

People have called for the separation of legal practice into solicitors and advocates as obtained in England and other Commonwealth jurisdictions, what is your reaction go this?

It will serve no useful purpose. People should on their own specialise in any area of law if they so desire.

What are your expectations from the forthcoming NBA conference in Calabar?

Well, I expect that it will be well organised and very successful at the end of the day. I hope members would actually participate in the working sessions and gain from attending the conference.

How do you feel about the globalisation of legal practice and the call for foreign lawyers to open shop in the country?

Globalisation is a phenomenon beyond our control. We can control its immediate impact on the foreign lawyers’ incursions front as we can’t stop it ultimately. Our own lawyers are setting up shops abroad too. So, we have to develop our capacity to meet the challenges of a globalised world.

Law has always been described as an instrument of social engineering and a catalyst for economic development, how has this applied to Nigeria and how do we improve the quality of our laws?

Our Law students and lawyers have to be well educated to understand that law is an instrument of social change before they can translate that into the type of advice they render to governments and the society in general. Our legal education is poor and not deep.

How do we resolve this recurring face off between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) so that we can have a stable academic environment in the universities?

Government should adequately fund education. They have made some progress along this line, but the effort so far is still below average. It is only proper funding that can improve the universities and guarantee stable academic environment.